hello and welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is cassie and my channel is all about helping you make money on etsy using print on demand print on demand is how i was able to quit my job and am now a full-time etsy seller amazon seller and now youtuber so exciting so this is actually the second video in a three-part series teaching you the basics of making listings for etsy my first video which i will go ahead and link for you was how to find the niches to design for so go back and watch that one if you have not already i'll link it in the description as well this video is all going to be about how to actually design your best selling listings so i'm going to go through a few different design templates that you can use and different layouts to make designs for yourself and then the third video is going to be how to actually set up your etsy listing so i'm going to go through mock-ups titles tags and descriptions so make sure to like and subscribe if you'd like to watch that next video as well bad designs are the biggest thing that i've seen holding new sellers back we all have to go through our phase of making bad designs but my hope with this video is to help you skip some of that phase so you can start making money sooner but there's still no better way than to practice so after watching this video go out and make a bunch of different designs try new things try new colors see what works for you and i know that jaren from the lifehacker couple channel always said that your first couple hundred terrible designs are the manure that your future great designs grow from all right so getting into how to actually design your shirts i made this quick little presentation so you can easily refer back to it it's more just basic exact layout so you can understand what types of things go into making a design so first i have this design checklist so before you even start making a design you want to make sure that you have all of these five things in mind the first thing is is there any demand for that niche is there any listings that are best sellers do a bunch of listings have 20 in the cart you can design the most beautiful thing but if no one's looking for it no one's going to buy it so sometimes there are under serviced niches where people are looking for it but there aren't any shirts available so feel free to make a design or two if you find one of these niches see if it does well and if it does then make more designs the second one is to always check for trademarks if there's a specific term that you're wanting to put on a shirt or in your title or in your tags you need to be checking for trademarks so you go to the uspto.gov you type in that search term and check to see if that term is live and if it's actually trademarked for shirts if something is trademarked for say shower curtains but it doesn't say anything about shirts then that is still safe to use in your listing so then the third one is doing some research on what types of designs and what types of colors are already working in the niche that you're looking at not even just that particular saying on a shirt but the overall bigger niche do a little bit of research to understand what's already out there so you can figure out how you can stand out but still appeal to the same people buying those best sellers the fourth thing to think about is not making any discounted versions of best sellers that are already out there if they already have made this design and are a bestseller and have a bunch of reviews it's going to be very hard to compete if you do a really similar design so you want to try and find a color a design style that is different than what's already on the first page so that way you can stand out lastly if this is not the most important one that i don't know what is other than trademarks and it is making sure that your design is easy to read in general but especially from the thumbnail if someone is scrolling through the etsy search listings and they can't read your design just from glancing at it then it probably won't get a lot of views considering you're up against competition of plenty of other shops that you probably can read their designs so keep this design checklist in mind when you are going to make new designs so there's four basic design styles that you can make for any niche and what i'd recommend is if you are trying a new niche or getting into something for the first time whether that's a holiday or a new evergreen niche then make at least one of each of these if not two or three of each because you never know what's going to be your best seller i know a lot of people talk about the 80 20 rule and that is true on etsy so what that means is that 80 of your sales are going to come from 20 of your listings but there's no way to predict which ones will be which so if you really want to be successful in a particular niche make more designs make different types of styles everyone likes different things and so you'll have to just remember that you're not designing for yourself you're designing for someone else and i think that's one of the hardest lessons for new sellers to learn is you don't have to like it if it's the style that's selling well you just have to make it the first simple design style is just simple text-based shirts the second one is colorful text-based shirts and then graphic shirts plus having text on them as well and lastly just graphic shirts so i'm going to go through some examples of each and exact layouts that you can use in your designs today so the first style is just text based designs i think a lot of people skip over this option because you think it's too basic but there are so many bestsellers out there that are just cursive words on a shirt or blocky words on a shirt and they do so well so you want to be in this design style as well so this first example i have just says cursive only and i did put the font name of each of the fonts i'll be using from canva so you can replicate this exactly in your own designs if you'd like this one is lily regular font on canva so a nice cute easy to read thicker font like this will be perfect don't use any of those script fonts where they're really swirly and hard to read again that is one of the most important things to pay attention to is that you can still read it the next text based design style is cursive and a blockier font so in this example i'm using twinkling stars in babis new i don't know how to say that one so you can use these two fonts together a lot of people like to do the cursive under or over the blocky font but you will see out there a lot where people do the cursive on top of the chunkier font and you can try different font combinations but doing two different fonts is a surefire way of getting some great sales another text based design style that i think is a little bit undervalued is the pocket design so whether you put just a graphic or just text over here on just the chest of the shirt a lot of people really love this kind of easy simple design style you know if it even just says mama you know the most simple things put over to the side like this sell well you do want to pay close attention when you're setting this up in printify or printful that you're really aiming to have it just a little bit past the collar and down you don't want to accidentally put the design over in your armpit so this does take a little bit more practice then there's the minimalist designs now i've seen entire shops that their only design style is this kind of minimalist text where you just have a simple easy to read font that's actually really little in the middle of the shirt these do very very well so don't undervalue i did do the exact font i used for this one and make sure it was very similar to some of the best sellers that i've seen out there so go make some minimalist designs now this one is absolutely huge once i show you this one you're going to start seeing it everywhere so it's when you have text kind of pushed to the left with little periods a lot of people will do like characters from a show or words from a different particular niche just the same word over and over again or like best teacher ever but again it's all the way pushed to the left you can do with or without the periods but this design style absolutely kills it especially when you do one of these more rustic fonts now this edmond texture font this i may have gotten from creative fabrica but i think this was actually right from canva but any of these kind of more distressed blocky fonts are great sellers for t-shirts so the next category is colorful text based shirts so this one i'm using the font from canva retro hungry but any retro font is going to do well retro fonts this year in general are just huge you're going to start seeing them everywhere so make sure to try a few different retro fonts for yourself and see what sells well and then use some colors for them this particular design i did a different color for each letter which you'll see is a big seller so doing repeating words with different colors is absolutely huge and my best recommendation is to find a color palette on the internet and use those colors that way you're not trying to guess which color is going to go with what other color you'll look up like a pink gradient or an ombre and see actual color paint swatches that you can use those hex codes on your designs that way all of the colors coordinate really nicely with each other here's another example of every letter being a different color you could do this for one word or an entire saying is a really pretty way to do it and this one the font is called bright retro so this is again kind of a more retro font but i did it in all caps so definitely something to try try all caps try not all caps and see what works for you next is graphic shirts so one thing i wanted to point out with this particular one is you want to try and use fonts that make sense with the graphic if you're making western cowgirl shirts you want to make sure to use a western font i found this one that i really liked called sand creek and it looks great under the desert scene that i did on this shirt in a nice mustard color shirt is what that one is and so you want to try and make sure that the fonts make sense for the design so then just graphic and text designs in general whether you do a rainbow above it or a couple butterflies anything that you can think of and then doing a cute font underneath cursive does great it's just a simple font underneath of a graphic but so do these kind of again more retro fonts this one's called nectarine i thought it was just really really cute so then we're getting into just graphics by themselves for these next ones so one really really really popular style is just nine graphics in a three by three pattern of literally anything the watercolor graphics in specific do really great for these i got these particular flowers off of creative fabrica i do have a link for them in my description it's a great place to get graphics from i know they do also have a special right now where it's a one dollar for your first month of unlimited graphics after that it is a 19 per month subscription but you can get so many fonts and so many graphics on there trust me it'll really pay off to have that if you haven't already checked out creative fabrica you do want to be careful i know it's tempting to get the pre-made t-shirt designs on creative fabrica but many of the full pre-made t-shirt designs are actually stolen from etsy and from amazon i did get a copyright infringement from using a pre-made t-shirt design from their ones so i always just use little graphics that i put together in my own design style that way it's not the same as what anyone else has another popular style is putting three graphics next to each other like i did here with these three butterflies and again this one it was from creative fabrica so the last design style that i did was specifically sunset graphics with text so this one is that same edmund font that i showed earlier so kind of a rustic looking font and then a nice sunset so what i'd recommend for these is you can get sunsets from a lot of places you can make these yourself but there's actually a website i use called allsunsets.com and i think it's thirty dollars a year and you get unlimited downloads of their sunsets and this one in particular with the mountain and the trees comes exactly as you see it the graphic is fully set to go but they also have some where it's just the circle with the colors and you get to add whatever graphic you'd like on top of it and then you pull those colors out of the design to use for your text curved above it and put below it and you would not believe how popular these sunset graphics really are and most of them again from all sunsets have really cool different graphics all over them they make them for every holiday if you want to make ugly christmas sweaters where it actually has that big block that you add just a graphic on top of they have those that is absolutely so worth it definitely check them out they do sell them individually as well but i think the subscription is super worth it you can really make a lot of different designs with those and it makes the process go so much faster and so much easier i do have a link for allsunsets.com in my description if you'd like to check them out again you'll love it thank you so much for staying until the end hopefully you found some of these design styles helpful and they'll help you make all of the money in the future but just remember that simple really does sell when it comes to designs for t-shirts don't over think it don't put a bunch of crazy colors use nice muted colors easy to read design styles and you will do great again i do have my one-on-one calls and my shop reviews linked below in the description if you'd like to pay for either of those services from me i'll be offering them for at least the next little while while my channel is nice and small but i am still replying to all of the comments in my youtube section for comments so feel free to chat with me there and i'll see you in the next one [Music]